It's not that teen boys are from Mars and teen girls are from Venus, exactly. But according to science, the two genders seem to travel in different orbits.

Back when Dr. Frances Jensen was raising her two teen boys, she marveled at how disorganized they were compared to girls who came to school carrying neatly stacked journals filled with meticulous notes.

"I can't tell you the amount of time I spent going back to school at 8:30 at night and asking the janitor to let us in because my son left his textbook in his locker before an exam," she says with a laugh.

'The Teenage Brain' by Frances Jensen

Different orbits

It's not that teen boys are from Mars and teen girls are from Venus, exactly. But according to science, the two genders seem to travel in different orbits.

While research on the subject is still in its early stages, a growing number of studies point out subtle differences between adolescent boys and girls, ranging from the ability to focus and organize to emotional empathy.

A 2012 Yale University School of Medicine study of 49 teenagers, for example, showed boys scored worse than girls when it came to "mentalizing," which the study described as the ability to sense a person's mental state and what they're thinking.

A 2015 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology looked at nearly 5,000 adolescents worldwide and found young teen girls were likelier to pay attention than boys. Other studies show teen girls can remember and come up with words quicker than teen boys.

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'Develop differently'

Experts stress that none of this means teen boys are slower or dumber than girls. It's just that boys' brains develop differently than girls' — a fact parents should be aware of as they help their pubescent sons navigate the bumpy road from acne to adulthood.

Jensen says multiple functional imaging studies prove girls' brains in their mid-teens are two years more mature than boys' brains, although the reasons behind it aren't clear.

The good news is the boys' brains do close the gap, eventually: "Their developmental trajectory catches up when boys are in their mid- to late-20s," says Jensen.

Don't let teens get too distracted by technology.

Gentle reminders

So what can parents do to help their teen boys?

Dr. Nicholas Westers, assistant professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center and clinical psychologist at Children's Health, says boys as well as girls can benefit from gentle reminders from Mom and Dad to pay attention and stay focused.

"In our technology-saturated world, it's really easy to have distractions, whether it's the TV, tablet, phone or computer," Westers says. "Parents can help by making sure there are no distractions and verbally checking in on them: 'Are you still on task with your homework?' If parents help them at first, they can learn to self-monitor and stay focused."

Parents can also help by teaching teens to take notes and use a planner, Westers says, pointing out that boys may be particularly eager to use a computer or device to do those tasks.

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The ability to mentalize — making sense of other people's mental states as well as our own — can be particularly challenging for teen boys, according to the Yale study. Jensen, however, says both genders struggle in this department.

"When you record teen brains responding to stressful exposures, they have twice as many signals as adults: It's like they're experiencing emotion in Technicolor and we're experiencing it in black and white," she says. "A minor thing like losing a football game can seem like an international incident to them."

Be in tune with feelings

"When I think about boys, I think about how they often have difficulty articulating and being in tune with what they feel," Westers says. "They're culturally conditioned that it's not OK to feel sad."

He advises parents to encourage their sons to "validate and help them identify what they're feeling: 'Sounds like you're angry or sad you can't play with your friends and that's OK, but we have dinner before we play, and there's no excuse for throwing a tantrum or inappropriate behavior.' "

Parents can also help teens with "empathy building, perspective taking and the ability to evaluate the rightness and wrongness of the situation," Westers says.

"Parents can help by modeling their own behavior — that's very important — and we can also help them look at all sides of the story and take perspective by saying 'How do you think it makes that person feel?' or 'How did that make you feel when they did or said that?'" he says.

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Stop, relax, think

He also suggests parents use a strategy called "S.R.T." (Stop, Relax, Think).

"It's easy for young teenagers to get overwhelmed by everything going on outside them. Reminding them to stop, relax and think can be helpful not just for attentiveness, but for anger and anxiety," he says.

Even if you successfully shepherd your teen son through early adolescence, things can get trickier as he gets older. Jensen cites several studies that show 18- to 20-year-old males take risks at a higher rate than females at that age.

Westers says parents should encourage teens of both genders to take "healthy risks" instead of dangerous ones.

"This is a great time to take positive risks that influence their own healthy brain trajectory," he says. "Risks that influence their brain development could be asking out a person they perceive to be out of their league, or maybe going zip-lining or rock-climbing with adult supervision, or forming a club at school."

Whatever techniques parents use in raising their teens, the key is to keep calm and don't shut your kids out.

"Researching my book made me into a more patient parent, more aware of what's going on in their world, instead of me just slamming the door and tearing my hair out and developing a really antagonistic relationship during the years when they really need you," Jensen says.

"They don't have the frontal lobe connectivity that we do," she says. "As adults, our brains reason well, so it's important that we give our teenagers a frontal lobe assist from time to time."